This month, our neighbours to the south of the border are celebrating the third annual Internet Safety Month. We came across the news via YouTube, which is celebrating by spotlighting videos that educate families on how to stay safe online.
As more and more Canadian businesses turn to the Internet as way to connect for customer service, ecommerce and billing, it’s important to think about safety and security both on the Internet and from within your organization. As an technology-based organization, TELUS has a strong commitment to Internet safety and IT security. While security issues and breaches are not new, they are constantly changing and extremely important to our customers. That’s why, for the past two years, we’ve worked with Dr.Walid Hejazi, Professor of Economics at the Rotman School of Management, to explore the nature of these constantly changing threats. Last year we found that, while Internet safety is important for Canadian companies, internal breaches were much more damaging. In Canada, IT security breaches cost the average Canadian organization an estimated $834,149 in 2009 – a 97 per cent increase from the $423,469 reported by the previous study (executive summary of 2009 Rotman-TELUS joint study).
What types of breaches are companies seeing? Where do they feel most vulnerable?
According to last year’s TELUS-Rotman IT Security Survey results, security breaches by organization insiders nearly doubled in 2009. The five fastest rising breach categories were:
- Unauthorized access to information by employees (up by 112%)
- Bots within an organization (up by 88%)
- Financial fraud (up by 88%)
- Theft of proprietary information (up by 75%)
- Laptop or mobile-device theft (up by 58%)
What are companies doing to improve governance processes?
Governance is, at a fundamental level, the process of balancing risks and optimizing resources to steer the best possible course and achieve the optimal overall business bottom line – which is no easy task. Furthermore, with the increase in enterprises extending services on the web, security threats are becoming more abundant and complex. Here at TELUS, we understand the broad range of threats that are present to organizations today. We have responded to customers by offering a complete range of security solutions specifically designed to secure applications and protect the confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of an organization’s data. We’re not only trying to offer simple and unified solutions, but services that can also provide a return on investment to the business owner.
Best practices and key learnings from TELUS:
As a large organization, we have several best practices for maintaining Internet safety and IT security. When thinking about best practices from the perspective of Internet Safety Month, we recommend increasing focus on education and awareness across IT, development and employees to ensure security risks and responsibilities are understood by all.
What’s your number one best practice or tip for Internet Safety Month?
